Baseball Prospectus

Love Baseball prospectus 2006. Great info and stats. I personally like the humor the authors do in there player Analysis. Makes it fun to read, not just a dry paragraph about numbers. Best part about the book is it is for real baseball fans and roto geeks. Both will enjoy the book.

This is the one book you need before draft day! Oh, and if you're just a major league baseball fan, especially one that knows that there is a lot more to find in the statistics than meets the eye, this book is for you. If your eyes glaze over when you try to decipher statistics, this book makes it easy to understand all you really need to know....oh, and love the snark!

I love this book, and every year, it gets better and better. It could come out earlier, and that would be great. This year, the essays in the back of the book are really outstanding, and I'd like to see more of them in future editions. The price has remained low for the book, but the quality of the printed pages has gone down some. That might be because the book was so heavy in the past, and they wanted to make it lighter. Heavier paper would be an improvement. Highlights of the book are the injury accounting formula, the limitations of statistical analysis article, and the team chapters on the New York Yankees, St. Louis Cardinals, Oakland As, and San Francisco Giants. They've also added a line for each player about the most similar players, which is really interesting, and kind of brings a focus to each player. The proofreading could be improved. There are many instances of typos, extra words, strange punctuation, but it doesn't detract from the book significantly.

As in past years, the group at BP have created a work that should prove valuable both to fantasy baseball players, as well as anyone interested in reading about how their team and others should fare this season. And while I found it lacking in a couple of areas, I would still consider it an essential purchase for the 2006 season. As usual, the most enjoyable part of the book is the player comments. It's always surprising how much information the BP gang can cram into a few sentences, and they manage to do so without making the comments dry and boring. While they may sometimes seem more than a little smug, they also exhibit some pretty great humor, and I've found myself laughing at these comments on many occasions. The team pages are also excellent, providing a great synopsis of the 2005 season and a preview of '06, with little in the way of wasted words or filler. It's nice to read a publication that credits its audience with having at least some sense of baseball knowledge, which I can't say is the case in many mainstream publications. Since this is a BP publication, the stats are obviously critical, and they've again done an excellent job of presenting their usuals (VORP, etc.) while also trying to investigate better ways to measure traditionally difficult areas like the value of speed. And while I know that the SABR crowd might not be happy about it, I think it's important that they've finally decided to include RBI for each player. I know that it's not the most meaningful stat, given that so much of it depends on other factors. However, it's criticalfor most fantasy leaguers, which is a demographic towards which this publication is aimed. I admit that RBIs aren't my favorite, either, but I think their inclusion is justifiable. Another new item that I find fun are the player comps. For each player, the writers give 3 "comparable" players based on their analysis. You may not necessarily agree with their comps, but they're definitely enjoyable, and they give you the chance to think things like, "Come on, Halladay is better than Gubicza ever was!" As for the faults, they're pretty minor. The first is one that seems to be a problem with every edition of this book - the poor editing, which includes both spelling and grammatical errors. A few mistakes are to be expected, but there are many throughout the book. There are no horrible, book-long errors like putting stats on the wrong line, but these little typos and poor grammar are quite noticable. The second complaint I have - and I might be in the minority here - is that I believe there should be more essays. I know that it's tough to work on the book, their web site, and essays for this book at the same time, but I would have appreciated some more 5-7 page contributions from these excellent writers. I'd recommend this to any fan, regardless of whether or not they're heavily into stats. The player comments alone are worth the price of this book, which is incredibly low for